MSNBC produced anti-Mitt Romney video

5/31/12 12:17 PM EDT

To the consternation of progressives everywhere, Fox News broadcast its very own attack video against President Barack Obama yesterday, raising charges that the conservative network had gone beyond the line of bias into an outright campaign against the incumbent.

But as The Atlantic Wire's John Hudson notes today, MSNBC produced and aired its own anti-Mitt Romney video in February, with no criticism whatsoever:

In late February, the left-leaning network aired a slickly-produced hit piece on Mitt Romney titled "Mitt: Better Off Mute" that aired on the nightly cable show Hardball with Chris Matthews and [the] Sunday morning talk show The Chris Matthews Show, which typically airs on NBC affiliates and their sister stations. The video lampoons Romney's habit of gaffing whenever he opens his mouth, and plays off the theme of the Oscar-winning film The Artist in which a silent film star struggles to adapt to films with sound.

The two videos are very different in both tone and intensity -- Fox's is omnious, MSNBC's is humorous -- but, at the most basic level, they both look like ads that could've been made by the RNC or the DNC, respectively.

In a statement yesterday, Fox News Channel's executive vice president of programming Bill Shine said the video "that aired on FOX & Friends was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network. This has been addressed with the show’s producers.”

I've reached out to MSNBC for comment on the Matthews video. Details here if and when I hear back.